Man, what a sad day for Cardinal nation. I vividly remember being in middle school (Mr. Kulick's class) during his rookie year. I was really into fantasy baseball and his name was funny. Nobody knew how awesome he would turn out to be. Since then, we've had so many great years and won two World Series titles, of which he was a huge part.

Waking up to the news that the Angels got him was a shock. I always thought we would keep him for his career. I knew it would cost a lot and possibly wasn't a great investment, but I just chalked it up as something the Cardinals HAD to do. Such a huge part of our team and our community, it would be too gut-wrenching to the best fans in baseball.

I have mixed emotions. I believe that Albert loved it here, who doesn't? Unfortunately, to some degree, I think Albert wanted "respect," in the $$$ sense. He still held a grudge that he was drafted 402nd a long time ago. He probably held a grudge that the Cardinals were underpaying him for the last several years when he was indisputably the best player in baseball.

The Angels put up a crazy offer that the Cardinals couldn't (and shouldn't) have matched.

As a Cards fan, I thank Pujols for all the memories and acknowledge that you were underpaid while you were here. You got us rings and worked for cheap for years and I don't think you *owe* us anything. I feel somewhat selfish for asking you to continue to be paid less than what you could get elsewhere. I think you're making a mistake to leave such a great organization, community, your STL legacy, and a good chance for more rings rings, but that's your decision to make.

It's just hard to see a hero leave, especially just after the epic run to winning the WS. Can't help but feel sad and angry, but it will probably just take some time to digest. For now, I'm in the market for a new STL jersey. #MVFreese #12in12

Sorry for a lack of updates on my end. I blame Twitter and Facebook. It's just so easy to post a quick update or thought and I've been having fun with that. You can follow me @craigthedeac btw

Yesterday was the third annual Turducken Tuesday, which takes place the Tuesday after Thanksgiving. It's a tradition amongst my San Diego friends, most of which are poker players. Since many of us are away travelling on actual Thanksgiving, we get together that Tuesday and have a big meal then. As you may have guessed, we eat Turducken.



Turducken is a turkey stuffed with a duck and chicken, with layers of stuffing in between. It is amazing, I highly recommend it. We also had a ton of sides and drinks and had a good time. This year, Leggo's own lostinthesaus and Not2Hot were lucky enough to be in SD at the time and they came along. We played some flag football (lostinthesaus is a beast on the D-line and Not2Hot likes to get phsyical) and my team crushed our way to winning both games.

Jeff and Vince also were introduced to beer pong (with paddles) and did pretty well in spite of the game being tough to get used to. I think they took some pictures on Turducken Tuesday and also from touring around San Diego, so maybe those will come later. To be safe, I'll make sure to post one of Vince missing the step onto our ferry and nearly going for a swim.

I drove across with a pretty loaded car and had a lease for a rental in Canada for 2.5 months. I did not have a current lease or own any property in the US. Other docs I brought were bank statements, util bill + note from parents claiming my residency there, and poker records (OPR, Hendon Mob screenshots).

The issues I had the most trouble with my first time was "so how do we know you won't stay in Canada?" I said things like, I have storage in USA, all my friends and family are in the USA, etc. This didn't seem satisfactory, they just said I could go back and visit my friends and replace my belongings. I'm not sure how anyone can really prove they won't stick around in Canada. I also had problems proving residency. The guy actually recommended I rent a US apartment close to the border and commute daily "and just play in an internet cafe," lol. Apparently he was suggesting that I needed to actually sleep in my US residence every night. He also wasn't satisfied that I had US employment since I was unable to play online poker there. Again, he thought this made me a likely candidate to stay in Canada. He was familiar with a lot of poker players coming through Canada recently. Some of those concerns seem reasonable.

When I went back the second time, I came with more documentation and a new (legitimate) spin on my employment.

I was able to sign a lease that afternoon (I know the landlord personally) for Nov 1st in San Diego. My Vancouver rental runs through the end of October. As for my employment, I talked about live poker (which I can and do play in the US) as well as online poker. I'm not sure why I didn't think of this the first time around. I said that my primary reason for going to Vancouver was to play WCOOP and that then I would be returning to the US to play WSOP circuit tournaments. This, again, is truthful and was the best way I could think of to prove intent to leave. I even booked a flight for early Nov out of SD for a circuit tournament. I brought proof of that which seemed to help a lot.

The second agent (a nice woman who had actually heard about my case from the previous agent) let me through without much hassle given my new documents. I am not sure if this is standard, but I got a visitor visa which gave me until Nov 7th in Canada. Before that deadline, I have to return to the same office, hand in my visa, and she said they will watch me exit the country. If I do not meet that deadline, she said immigration will issue a warrant for my arrest and I will not be allowed to re-enter Canada in the future.

Hopefully my case is helpful to others attempting to make them move. I'm guessing my situation is very similar to many of you.

Cliffs: get a lease, flight, or something solid to prove you will actually be in the US when you say you are. If you play live poker at all, really stress that as a viable employment option for you in the US. I had done a lot of research in threads here and thought I had everything I needed to cross the border successfully the first time, which proved wrong.

So far the WSOP has gone pretty terribly. I'm 0/11 (I think) in tournaments even though I acquired a decent stack in most of them. A few close calls but that's tournaments I guess. Fortunately cash games have gone okay thus far.

After WSOP my plans are sorta up in the air. My lease in SD expires at the end of July. At least for now, the plan is to move to Buenos Aires in mid August or Sept. Obviously the major reason being to be able to play online but also from what I've researched about BA it sounds like a pretty cool place to be so I'm excited for the change.

The situation with Full Tilt is really depressing because I had a decent chunk of change on that site which isn't looking good. Hopefully I can ship a tournament in my remaining time here (Main Event please?!?!) and wash all my worries away.

Any opinions/comments on BA would be appreciated! Craig

Greg is HU right now in the EPT 5k Euro PLO tourney. 136k Euros for first and 82k Euros for 2nd. A deal is being discussed but it sounds like they may just be playing for it at this point.

Soooo sick gogogo!

Reid's latest blog was pretty awesome. Lots of poker players are freaking out by the latest news. It's natural to be concerned but there is just so little information at this point and basically nothing we can do. All of the speculation is just making things super stressful. Instead of sitting around refreshing 2+2 and packing a get-away bag I spent the weekend poolside with friends, sipping girly frozen drinks that one can only get away with poolside or on vacation. The 80 degree, not a cloud in the sky, slightly breezy weather combined with all the eye-candy and tunes from the Hard Rock pool DJ was pretty much perfect.



My WSOP plans have not changed, I'll be in Vegas the whole time, hopefully bringing home some gold. The online poker news means the next 6 weeks or so I will spend some time playing live cash games which will serve as some good warmup for the series.

What will happen after the series for me, I don't know. I'm fortunate to have a lot of flexibility at that time, my lease in SD will have expired, I have a good college degree to fall back on, and I am not necessarily tied down to living in the US if leaving the country proves to be the best option. But I'll worry about that in the coming few months when we have a better idea of what our options are.

In the meantime, my happy thoughts list!

-SD weather. 95% of the time the weather here is beautiful. This leads to enhanced enjoyment of tennis, golf, beaches, etc. which would also be on this list. Looking forward to taking advantage of the beauty the next month or so now that I'm "unemployed."


-Family. Super supportive and I'm really lucky to have 'em. I'm going back home this weekend for a few days and can't wait to see them and...

-The St. Louis Cardinals. They got off to a rough start and have been extremely unlucky with some freak injuries. Pujols is on his last year of his contract and it's going to be a tough year for us for a lot of reasons, but I love this team and they've been showing up big as of late.

-SD poker players. There are probably 20 or so poker playing friends I have here and it's a really fun and crazy group of guys. The last couple days we've had some pretty epic "unemployment parties" and we have been keeping each other in good spirits. I would be shocked if there was a cooler network of poker players out there. We have some pretty big partiers, degens, and all-around good guys.


-Pappy Van Winkle. It's a bourbon. It's awesome.


-Farmers markets. San Diego has some huge farmers markets, particularly on the weekends. Such a great way to start your weekend with some local goods/food, live music, and a lot of friendly people.

So I haven't played many Sunday tourneys lately, but today I played 2. The Sunday mill (obv) and the $215 HU MTT on PS. I would have played some FTP tourneys but FTP was crashing this afternoon. Anyways I won the $215 HU I think I had to win 9 straight matches. I think I had a pretty good draw overall, a lot of my opponents were the type I felt I could grind down, which is nice considering that HU SNGs generally offer very little edge. Anyways, I chopped HU with someone while playing for 1k and finished with a $11,500 score. Pretty pumped. Anyways, just chilling in SD until Fri when I expect to travel up to San Jose for Greg's FT of the WPT Bay 101.

Getting ready to head to the final table to sweat Greg who is 4/6 with $1.6mill going to first


Gogogogogo Greg!

Thursday the Chargers hosted the 49ers for Thursday Night Football. I went with a group of 11 and we got there early for tailgating. The crew got a little too crazy and there were actually 5 guys that got kicked out. One guy got kicked out at had his ticket taken away. He found a scalper and bought another ticket then snuck back in, only to get kicked out again, for a different reason and not because they realized he snuck back in. I wasn't really surprised given how rowdy some of my group was as well as some opposing fans around us.



Friday morning I flew back to St. Louis for a wedding and to stay through Christmas. Weather in Phoenix caused my departure to be delayed and I missed my connecting flight. Fortunately I was able to get a flight later that afternoon to St. Louis but naturally spent the time in between talking football at the bar with a Raiders fan which was pretty fun. Upon arrival, I went to my cousin's wedding rehearsal dinner, followed by taking a party bus to a club downtown with my brother and a bunch of old friends from high school.

Saturday was my cousin's wedding and reception which was held in a casino conference room. It was a fun time with my family and the reception location was pretty awesome actually. The venue itself was pretty nice and the fact that a hotel and casino are in the same building as the reception is a great idea for both entertainment and safety as fewer people needed to drive that night. After the reception I played blackjack with my uncle and cousins and ran really hot and won about 2k betting an average of roughly $60.

Sunday I woke up early to go tailgate the Rams game with my brother, marking my 2nd NFL game in a few days. We sat midfield 7 rows back which was awesome, but unfortunately we lost to the Chiefs. A win would have been great for both the Rams and the Chargers. Both teams are in the hunt to win their division even though both teams have had their struggles this year. I'm pretty confident that the Chargers will win their last 2 games, they will just need the Chiefs to lose to the Titans or at Oakland. The NFC West could easily be won by 3 of the teams. The Rams host the 49ers and then play at Seattle. The final game @ SEA is a must-win for the Rams. SF has a good chance despite being a game behind both teams since they play ARI the last week. If they win both their remaining games, they will be 7-9 with the best division record and would win the division, assuming SEA loses at least one game which is very likely. I realize all of these teams are huge dogs in the playoffs but whatever that's how it is and I'm still gonna root for the Rams who have done really well this year compared to their last few years.



Plan for the next couple of days is to recover (I finally got a good night's sleep last night, actually passed out around 8pm). Hope everyone is doing well and has a nice holiday season!

Over the last few months, I've been thinking about getting a dog. It's obviously a huge commitment and not a decision I'm taking lightly.

I live in spacious 1 BR which has several parks nearby. I have a flexible schedule so taking it our frequently won't be an issue like it would be to someone with a 9-5 job.

The advantages are fairly obvious, dogs are awesome. I have a few concerns that I'm weighing and hopefully I'll make up my mind in the next month or so.

1) I'm allergic to some dogs and pretty much any cat. This shouldn't be too much of a worry though because I've looked into hypoallergenic dog breeds that don't shed or shed very little.
2) I've never had a pet beyond a couple of fish when I was a kid. So while I have a rough idea of the responsibilities required, it's possible that I am underestimating them.
3) Travel. I probably average four days away from home per month outside of WSOP, sometimes for a week or two. I know there are pet hotels and I have friends that could potentially watch my dog, but I wouldn't want to be leaving it frequently.
4) WSOP. During the summer I spend about a month in Vegas. I would either need to find a rental place that allows me to bring my dog or go to the WSOP for a shorter amount of time (split between trips).
5) Potential schedule changes. While my schedule right now is great for taking care of a dog, I can't assume that it will be the same in a couple of years depending on if I'm still playing poker or not. I'd hate to leave a dog locked inside all day during the week.

My limited research has me leaning towards getting a Border Terrier puppy as seen below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GAiSUQ9QMc

So, if anyone has any some advice given my situation it would be greatly appreciated.

Craig